GENREALITY

I started blogging long before I sold a book. With the full-time job and family stuff I didn’t really have alot of time to write, but I still used some of those precious minutes to blog. It was a way to get in the habit of writing something every day. It also gave me the chance to reach out to other writers and readers. Those few minutes of blog writing jumpstarted my book writing. I could blog, blog hop a bit and then I had to start writing. During those years I came close to blogging every day.

That was then. Today my blogging habits are quite different. I’m much more careful about the blogs I visit. Much of the kerfluffle stuff – you know, the “this author is behaving badly” stuff – while intriguing can derail my productivity. I now go to a few places, but not nearly as regularly as I used to. My blogging habits have changed over time. I’ve thought, more than once, about shutting down the blog or turning it into a diary where I post now and then but not with any certianty. Just when I decide it’s time to stop, I think of a bunch of things I want to say and I keep it running.

It’s interesting that the subject matter on my blog has also changed. I still talk about industry stuff, but I’m more guarded. After a few times of saying something and experiencing the fallout I decided I didn’t have the time or energy to enter into angry debates. Who does? That stuff is exhausting. Again, it can be interesting to read but adding up the writing time lost while wading through comments is depressing.

I also remember hearing Nora Roberts talk about blogging. She said something like: I write for a living and don’t write for free. I’m not sure I agree with that completely, but I do know that I make a living from writing, so I need to weigh the time I spend on fun blogging versus book writing. Yeah, I get the promo value of blogging. I also enjoy blogging, which is why I’m thrilled to be included in this group blog, but there are only so many hours in a day. Any chance one of those internet/social media inventor gurus is out there trying to add time to the day? Now that’s something I could support.

This is a release week for me. My book, WHEN SHE WASN’T LOOKING, came out on Tuesday. Release week is always a bit scary. While I’m excited the book is out there and people are reading it, there is still an overriding sense of panic. You know the one. It’s the will anyone like it feeling. Since the book is a Harlequin Intrigue and six Intrigues release at the same time, I get the additional will everyone read all the other Intirgues and skip mine panic.

Ah, isn’t it great to be paranoid and excited at the same time? No.

In honor of my historical release time craziness I’ve set some groundrules. Keep in mind, I break these rules pretty often, but in theory these are smart:

1. Do not obsessively check the Amazon and B&N rankings of the book. Logically, I don’t even know what these ranks translate to in terms of sales and they can jump pretty far based on a few sales, so there’s no need to watch them. In reality, there’s so little else to track, so it’s hard not to track these.

2. Never, under any circumstances, read the Amazon reviews for the book. You can imagine how often I obey this one. I am nosy, after all. I have, however, trained myself to look at the number of stars and figure out if I really want to read. For example, gettng a one star because the reader is upset the book wasn’t a children’s book – and this has happened many times – is not something I spend a lot of time worrying about.

3. Turn off Google Alerts. Someone out there will say something nasty and that is the only alert I will get, so best to ignore them all. Then there’s the alert you get before the book is even out about how to get a pirated version of book. Makes my eye twitch.

4. Let it go. The reality is I’ve written books since this one and at the time I wrote the one coming out I wrote the best book I could. If I would write a different scene or whatever today, that’s tough. The official release day is today but I released it long ago.

5. Keep writing. This one I actually obey pretty regularly. The best thing to do to keep from worrying about the one out now is to keep writing the best I can on the one in front of me.

There you go. My survival tips. These and chocolate (or your favorite snack) and goods friends you can whine to. Perfection.

I turned in a book on April 15th. It was one of those tight deadlines where you kind of forget everything else just to get the book done. Of course, now that I type that it sounds like every deadline, but you get the idea. Sometimes we have fewer weeks to write a book and have to adjust. This was one of those times.

Now comes the post-deadline ritual. It goes something like this:

1. Look around at the house and be horrified at how junked up it looks. There are piles of mail and books on the kitchen counter. Since this was also tax time, there are tax documents on the dining room table. Over there I see clothes on the floor and hanging over various pieces of furniture. Even though the hubby did a valiant job of cleaning, and without him we’d live in filth, the house still needs some order.

2. Look at the DVR and try to calculate the number of unwatched television hours stored there. This is a tough one. There really are only so many hours in a day and the there are still more shows scheduled to be taped over the next week or so. Something must go…and there’s only 21% space left, so something must go now before the DVR space fills and I miss a show I actually do want to watch (note: the second season fo the BBC’s Sherlock Holmes comes on soon and if I miss it I’ll scream).

3. Look at my email inbox and contemplate just deleting the 987 messages in there and starting over fresh. This one is tempting, but I run the risk of actually missing something important. Even if the calculation is for every 300 spam emails there’s one “must see” one, that means I have to play search-and-rescue to find the 3.5 important ones in there.

4. Look around and see everything else I forgot to do. This list usually overwhelms me because it includes copyedits for a book and process and promo for one that’s about to come out. I;ve decided to ignore this one for now.

5. Look around and see how many friends and family members are about ready to call in the police for a wellness check. I do manage to email during tight deadlines, but I won’t pretend I can keep up. I can’t. Six years into this career most people I love know this and understand, but it’s that one person who doesn’t who will kill you with guilt.

6. Stop looking around and procrastinating and start writing the next book.

If anyone has a better process, please let me know.

This week’s topic is the best and worse writing advice we’ve ever gotten. As most of you know, there is an unending supply of advice people offer when you write. Today, after 30 books, a guy I know insists of talking to me about how he could have my book printed for me for a fe thousand dollars. I explained that I’m fine. When that didn’t work, I tried explaining the differences in print publishing, digital publishing, self-publishing and even vanity publishing to him. Still, he is undaunted. He can help me. Really, he’s happy to do it.

[ugh]

Among all the random bits of advice out there are some gems. But it’s not hard for me to pick the best. That award goes to a relatively simple concept I still struggle every day to implement and remember: your writing career is a marathon, not a sprint. I heard this from my first editor, the awesome Kate Duffy. She died a few years ago but I whenever I start thinking I’m not writing fast enough or publishing the right thing, or feel like I’m falling behind people who started writing about the same time I did, I hear Kate’s voice. It’s great advice. You’ll find that living it is the hard part.

The worst advice I ever got is probably a combination of things. It’s any comment that purports to know THE RIGHT WAY write. Man, if only it was that easy. If you could just learn the magic secret, punch in the right words and – boom! – bestseller. How great does that sound? Do you know how many movies I could watch each day? Uh, no.

One of the interesting things about all this advice is how much of it conflicts. You must write to the market. No, you must write the book of your heart. You should start with traditional NY publishers. No, only an idiot would waste time with that route. And those don’t even touch the conflicting advice you get about the actual craft of writing. Seems to me the only way to succeed and thrive, and not go insane, is to remember no one way works for everyone. I also find eating chps helps.

The last three weeks have been interesting, kind of a lesson in you can’t control everything. I have two books due between now and May 30th. I scheduled the deadlines, so there’s no one to blame but me. No whining here. Actually, the scheduling was fine but it depended on a very basic concept – nothing could go wrong. So, naturally, everything went wrong.

Three weeks ago I had a strange week in my writing career. There was an offer issue and some other stuff happened. Nothing catastrophic but some of it was a surprise I had to sulk about then get over. I actually blogged about it here at Genreality.

Just when I was mentally up and running again last week, something else happened. I got the stomach flu. My hubby was out of town and I was crashing on the book due April 15th. All was well until Tuesday night when I got sick So sick. I won’t describe it because no one needs to read about that stuff. Suffice to say I had a case of the chills Tuesday that made it impossible for me to move. Wednesday and Thursday were spent playing the bribery game. I was in a dead sprawl where every part of me ached and I would say things like, “in one hour I’ll get up and try to write three pages” and then I wouldn’t be able to lift my head. Friday was rebounding day. I spent it in a haze of non-writing exhaustion.

You get the idea.

This week was…you got it, write my butt off week. To make up for missed writing time I had to double up over the last few days. This involved constant writing, sore wrists and little-to-no sleep. I know, it sounds lovely. You should see what I look like. Hint: it’s not good.

Next time some journalist wants to write an author profile for a romance or women’s fiction author, I should get the call. I don’t hang around in my mansion in a fancy lounging outfit {stereotype alert}, but I am the right person for photos. Because, really, is there anything sexier than an exhausted author bent over her laptop, wearing ripped sweatpants and rocking unwashed hair in a haphazard ponytail? I think not.